By Mallory Mattingly
Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn opened up about the mental toll her Feb. 8 Olympic crash has taken on her.
“Today was a hard day…my physical battle began the second I got hurt but the mental battle started today,” the downhill skier wrote on X on Feb. 24. “It hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s a battle I’m used to because I’ve done it so many times. I have always learned from every injury. Each one has made me a better and stronger person in different ways…but the battle of the mind can be dark and hard and unrelenting.”
“Someone I care about said I am a ‘master at the psychological game of life…’ I don’t know if that’s true…I do know hard days are coming, but I will find a way back to the top of the mountain of life,” she said.
Vonn sustained a complex tibia fracture and broken ankle earlier this month while competing at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Related: Lindsey Vonn Undergoes Fourth Surgery After Olympic Crash: ‘Ride Was Worth the Fall’
Earlier this week, the athlete updated fans after finally leaving the hospital following a two-week stay.
“After almost 2 weeks of lying in a hospital bed, almost completely immobile, I’m finally well enough to move to a hotel. It’s not home yet, but it’s a huge step!” she wrote in the post.
The injury was a lot more serious than she first believed. Along with the complex tibia fracture, she suffered a fractured fibula head, tibial plateau and “just kind of everything was in pieces.”
“And the reason why it was so complex was that I had compartment syndrome,” she explained. “And compartment syndrome is when you have so much trauma to one area of your body that there’s too much blood and it gets stuck, and it basically crushes everything in the compartment, so all the muscle, nerves and tendons, it all kind of dies. Dr. Tom Hackett saved my leg. He saved my leg from being amputated.”
She’s set her focus on rehab now, working to progress from a wheelchair to crutches over the coming weeks. The total healing process will take about a year.
But bright spots, like reuniting with her dog Chance, lift her spirits.
“Reunited with Chance…. ❤️❣️Had a pretty hard day yesterday, everything just really hit me hard and I broke down. I know there will be a lot of days like this…the internal mental battle has just begun but moments like this help me so much,” Vonn shared.
Though Vonn has a long road to recovery, she knows she can overcome, even when the mental battle gets hard.
Read Next: Lindsey Vonn Updates Fans After Devastating Olympic Crash in Final Career Run
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